Farm Bureau Insurance

The Client

Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance Company (SFBCIC) is a multi-line regional property and casualty insurance company operating in six SFBCICstates: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Currently, Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance Company has a Superior Rating of A+ from the A.M. Best Company.

The Challenge

Providing a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy to SFBCIC has become a critical need as more SFBCIC employees and agents have begun utilizing smart phones and tablets to perform daily work activities. BYOD has been a primary concern during many mobility conversations between IT, executives and agents. Using mobile devices is not only convenient for employees and agents, but it can also greatly enhance the agent’s ability to provide better and faster service to SFBCIC customers, which enhanced customer service is vital to our organization. With the widespread adoption of tablets and smartphones, it became apparent that the IT team needed to offer a BYOD policy that could, among other things, deliver a simple user interface for its employees, allow for secure emailing by employees as well as agents, and provide access to SharePoint and its rate applications. These were critical business requirements when selecting an Enterprise Mobility Management vendor.

After researching the available options, the IT team entered into an agreement with Workspot for their Louisiana location in November 2013. Louisiana’s IT team has continually been challenged to support its remote office employees and road warriors, especially when providing remote workers with new technology. With Workspot, SFBCIC employees and agents in Louisiana have the ability to leverage their personal tablets and smartphones both at work and on the road while visiting customers.

IT’s strongest use case was supporting insurance agents who wanted a flexible technology to maximize their time with customers or prospects. Louisiana’s IT team supports over 500 agents and employees. “For mobility access, especially for our insurance agents, we needed an intuitive user interface that was simple for our field agents to download and manage on their own mobile device,” says Gordon Michelli, Manager of PC Development and Support, SFBCIC.

The Solution

After meeting Workspot at Cisco Live, SFBCIC started to evaluate solutions in the market for their Louisiana location. “We looked at a few vendors, and they did not meet our criteria for user experience” shared Michelli.

Louisiana’s IT team leveraged Workspot’s free cloud-based pilot of ten users. “Piloting with Workspot cloud enabled us to leverage our existing infrastructure. Other enterprise mobility vendors wanted us to install an appliance in the data center,” according to Michelli. “We picked members from our agent’s technology advisory committee, and we outfitted these agents with SharePoint for intranet, email and our homegrown rate application to test out Workspot.”

During the pilot program, which was completed in a matter of days, the agents gave positive feedback, noting the convenience of traveling with an iPad and not having to carry a laptop to meetings. The most impactful feedback included multiple agents sharing how the iPad made presentations more personal with their clients. “Showing our products on the iPad opened up more people talking to us, and people would engage by zooming into the product pages,” claims a SFBCIC insurance agent in Louisiana. The feedback gave Michelli and his team sufficient context for a management presentation.

Client Engagement

Following feedback from the initial pilot, Gordon received emails from other sales reps asking for access. “It was a good problem to have. Workspot is easy to download, and it’s an app on iTunes. So, when reps heard about Workspot from the other pilot testers, the reps began downloading Workspot on their own,” says Michelli.

Benefits

The rollout of Workspot has been very easy on Louisiana’s IT support and desktop teams. Workspot offers onboarding documentation and step-by-step videos that allow agents to adopt Workspot in minutes. “Before the rollout and communications, Workspot gave us step-by-step documentation,” says Michelli. “I like how Workspot is so simple to deploy, and it didn’t require extra desktop support. The documentation and videos that Workspot provided to our team make it a smooth and fast rollout.”

The biggest benefit to SFBCIC’s business in Louisiana is the increased customer engagement coupled with fast turnaround times. SFBCIC values its quality of products and agents. With the new delivery of products on iPads, both sales and management have seen more interaction and questions from clients, translating into higher customer satisfaction. “We sell insurance, but what matters most is client satisfaction, especially for our most remote clients who are, at times, miles away from a city,” expressed Michelli. “Now we have technology that highlights our key value: Real Service. Real People.”